Eyeteeth: Incisive ideas

9.17.2015

"What's your favorite 'Paul Schmelzer,' Paul Schmelzer?" On Sunday, that's the question BBC London's Gaby Roslin posed to me on the air, in regards to my quest to get famous people to sign my name. Listen to our conversation about Signifier/Signed:

Over the course of six hours on Labor Day weekend, Twin Cities-based graffiti writer IMPEACH—subject of my recent profile at Medium.com's re:form—created this commissioned mural on my family's south Minneapolis garage. It's an amazing piece of handwork, and so fitting for our growing family in our new home (new big brother Kai, below, approves). Take a look:

3.19.2015

“While most of us click away on keyboards and phones to spread news of the latest injustice on social media platforms only seen by people that we already know and [who] largely agree with us, IMPEACH grabs those same headlines and covers trains with them,” says [artist, curator, and Justseeds founder Josh] MacPhee. “He’s created an entirely new art form — behemoth metal broadsheets, tracking the news across North America.”

For the fourth installment of the Walker Art Center's Artist Op-Eds series, I invited Ron Athey to share his perspective on the 1994 Minneapolis performance that all but blacklisted him at US art venues for a decade, his life with HIV, and the realization that the disease wouldn't kill him after all. The result, "Polemic of Blood: Ron Athey on the 'Post-AIDS' Body," marks the first time Athey has discussed the events of March 1994 on a Walker platform (and the most comprehesive addressing of it by the Walker to date), and he'll likely revisit some of these themes next week during the weekend-long series of events Culture Wars: Then & Now here in Minneapolis. The essay comes out as Athey commemorates the 30th anniversary of his diagnosis with HIV and shares news of his return to Los Angeles after six years living overseas. It's a surprisingly poignant piece that sheds light on the life experiences and thinking that propel Athey's work.

10.10.2014

Just hours to go until ArtPrize reveals its winners for 2014, and there's been a flurry of response to news that finalist Steve Lambert will be donating his winnings to a Grand Rapids–based LGBT organization. The most noteworthy:

[I]f Grand Rapids is serious about embracing art and about the art world embracing them, they will have to prove that they’re committed to helping create an environment where art can flourish — one where all types of people, ideas, and identities are welcome to play, work, and live together. Until that happens, they shouldn’t be surprised if ArtPrize’s mission to be a “radically open” art community is never fully realized. Rick DeVos and ArtPrize, make a statement to demonstrate that your mission isn’t only an idea, but a commitment to something more.

Likewise, ArtFCity's Paddy Johnson, who was part of an ArtPrize panel on Grand Rapids TV, both celebrated Lambert's decision and expressed some discomfort over Lambert's "assumption that Rick DeVos necessarily holds all the views of his family or spends his money on the same causes." But she concludes: "He’s not just asking his audience to think seriously about capitalism, he’s demanding that of himself. And that just makes me want to see Lambert’s piece win even more."

...Another reason we welcome this development is Lambert’s choice of where he’ll donate the money. First of all, an artist who is not from West Michigan pledging to use potential winnings to give back to our community is a wonderful and generous thing. But it’s even better than that. The Grand Rapids Community Foundation, the organization behind the Our LGBT Fund, is an ArtPrize sponsor. Earlier this year we were proud to announce the that Community Foundation awarded ArtPrize a $50,000 gift to work to ensure that everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or socioeconomic status, can join the conversation and have their voices heard at the world’s largest art competition.

Paul Schmelzer: Congratulations on being an ArtPrize finalist. Your artwork/billboard/voting booth Capitalism Works for Me could, well, work for you: you might take home anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000. It seems like the perfect venue for the work, as ArtPrize is largely based on a popular vote among attendees. But with 24 hours to go until the winner is revealed, you decided not to keep the money if you win. Why?

Steve Lambert: Thanks. It has not been easy.

The chance to win a prize was not what compelled me to show at ArtPrize. I was curated into a show at the Kendall Museum during ArtPrize which I figured would make for a larger audience of everyday people. I'm excited to have Capitalism Works For Me! True/False shown around the world, especially when seen by non-art audiences—and especially to so many people in Grand Rapids. I believe in the work. And it turns out most of the people at ArtPrize liked the work also. That was great.

Last week I was in Grand Rapids and learned I was on the juror's shortlist, then shortly after, I was also in the top 25 for the popular vote. While I appreciated the nod, as winning the prize became more real, I started to feel this knot in my stomach. I manage myself well, and I am far from a starving artist, but I still have bills to pay, new pieces I'm working to get funding for, I don't own a home, etc. In short, I could definitely use the money. Yet, at the same time, I couldn't imagine accepting the money.

I see a lot of ways I can use the prize to help people in Western Michigan. You know, there's a lot of hostility in Western Michigan toward LGBTQ rights. Millions of dollars come from that area to fund homophobic campaigns around the country. That money could be helping foster an environment of love, compassion, growth, and support, but instead they fund homophobia, campaigns that hurt working people, and attack public schools.

I won't have millions of dollars, but I have more than money. With the Center for Artistic Activism, Stephen Duncombe and I have have helped those fighting for equal rights in Russia and the former Yugoslavia – some of the most homophobic places in the world – so we're prepared for Western Michigan. In that realm, I have something else I can offer.

This award, even if it is the grand sum of $200,000, won't give me the same platform as any billionaire or millionaire funder, but it gives me another chance to join others and fight back.

PS: A few days ago in an email to supporters you shared that you were "conflicted" about accepting the prize money, should you win.

"The DeVos family, who is behind ArtPrize, are the founders of Amway, have put millions into anti-gay marriage efforts, attacking public schools and teachers unions (I am a member of a teachers union), and support the ultraconservative Calvinist Christian Reformed Church," you wrote. "ArtPrize is basically the least offensive thing they do and it buffers some of the criticism of the rest of the work the family does." This reminds me of questions about sponsorship in the arts: are artists sullied when they show at venues supported by corporations they may detest? (Liberate Tate, for instance, opposes BP's sponsorship of the Tate.)

SL: This is a messy area and there are no clear-cut rules. Because of the lack of public funding for the arts, individual artists have to make these judgement calls every step of the way. It is not easy.

My parents were in the church, but religion for them is teaching of love and acceptance. I was also raised to stand up for what you believe in and help those you see in need. I had to ask myself, how much worse would this have to be for me to say "no thank you." And the answer was "it's already pretty bad."

Great art shifts our perspective on the world. Shows us another way to perceive things, broadens our thinking, and reveals other ways the world can be. It makes us more understanding and empathetic. This is why I am an artist. I want to use the prize money towards this end, and the DeVos's seem to use their money for the opposite.

I hope I don't regret it, but right now I already feel better. As an artist, I am confident I will continue to be supported by people who believe in what I do, as long as I continue to believe in what I do.

PS: Some say Rick DeVos's politics aren't as divisive as those of his parents.

SL: I agree, it seems Rick DeVos's views are not as extreme as his parents', and especially his grandfather. However, if that's true, I wish him the courage to be just as outspoken as his family, but on the side of love and acceptance, fighting for working people, ending militarism, and the value of publicly funded education for all. It would be nice to hear from him on that.

In the meantime, when these backward ideas about civil rights and unrestrained capital are over-funded and allowed to go unquestioned and unchallenged, within a family or within our society, it's unhealthy for our culture and our democracy. So again, if Rick DeVos is really so different, I hope he says something soon.

PS: You tweeted that not only would you be donating your winnings, should you win, to the LGBT Fund, but you'll also be returning with colleagues from your Center for Artistic Activism to volunteer with them. Is this a critique of modern political "activism" in which we often allow money to stand in for action?

SL: Ha! I didn't think about it that way, but just giving money didn't feel right, so I suppose so.

PS: What are your thoughts on your decision in light of the themes of the work itself? Capitalism, we're often told, is amoral: money is morally neutral. But, for you, this money has context.

SL: It certainly does. Update: On his website, Lambert offers further explanation, writing (in part): "What bothers me the most is the DeVos family has, for generations, been on the wrong side of the fight for civil rights for LGBT people. And they back their opinions with millions in political money against civil rights. It’s a long story, but the end is: they haven’t changed."

10.09.2014

ArtPrize seems like an apt venue for artist Steve Lambert's Capitalism Works for Me project. Arguably the art world's most populist high-profile event, the annual Grand Rapids–based festival allows visitors to vote on their favorites works, with winners in both juried and public-vote categories taking home anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000. Lambert's project, a mobile billboard/voting machine that invites passersby to weigh in—true or false—on the artwork's eponymous statement, is a finalist in both the juried and popular vote contests. And tomorrow could be Lambert's payday.

To those who know Lambert, the agonizing shouldn't come as a surprise. Co-founder of the Center for Artistic Activism (with Stephen Duncombe), he's more interested in art's role in making change than in making money.

Lambert hasn't publicly elaborated on his decision yet—although he's agreed to answer my questions about it later tonight—but a clue to his rationale might reside in his choice of the Grand Rapids Foundation's LGBT Fund as recipient of his potential winnings: ArtPrize is the brainchild of Rick DeVos, the grandson of Amway co-founder Rich DeVos, the multibillionare whose family has funded an array of political causes, and son of Amway former president (and Orlando Magic CEO) Dick DeVos and former Michigan Republican Party chair Betsy DeVos. As Matthew Power wrote for GQ in 2012, "the DeVoses have for decades quietly underwritten a mind-boggling array of free-market and evangelical-Christian causes. Pull back the curtain on a hot-button conservative issue, from anti-gay-marriage statutes to privatizing public education to the Citizens United case, and you'll find the extended DeVos family."

It's unclear, as Power states, to what degree the younger DeVos shares his family's conservative values on social issues, and ArtPrize staffers I've discussed the issue with over the past few years say his politics are far milder. His parent's family foundation is listed an as ArtPrize sponsor, and news reports state that ArtPrize finalist prize money has come from the foundation as well. Only Lambert can state whether this link is the key factor in his decision to give away his potential ArtPrize winnings.

9.18.2014

“It’s a community of people who are — it sounds so corny — just
dreaming," says designer Erik Brandt of Ficciones Typografika, the international design poster show he's been curating on his Minneapolis garage for the past 15 months. "People experimenting and doing something idiosyncratic, for no
other reason than that they want to do it.” With no rules, no deadlines, and no pay, the project has become a vibrant playground for a range of design innovators from around the world, from legendary names (Ed Fella, Reza Abedini, Anthony Burrill) to new-generation innovators (Sang Mun, Felix Pfäffli, Janneke Meekes). Following up last summer's Eyeteeth interview with Brandt just after the project got started, here's my new feature on it for Medium's design site re:form. Enjoy!

9.24.2013

• The amazing (and reclusive) Montreal collective Godspeed You ! Black Emperor was awarded the Polaris Music Prize Monday night for their album Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! The band didn't show up to receive their jumbo-sized check, though. Instead, they sent a rep from their record label who announced they'd be using the $30,000 prize to buy musical instruments for inmates in Quebec prisons. Later they released a statement about the prize and accompanying soiree, noting three "quick bullet-points that almost anybody could agree on maybe":

-holding a gala during a time of austerity and normalized decline is a weird thing to do. -organizing a gala just so musicians can compete against each other for a novelty-sized cheque doesn’t serve the cause of righteous music at all.-asking the toyota motor company to help cover the tab for that gala, during a summer where the melting northern ice caps are live-streaming on the internet, IS FUCKING INSANE, and comes across as tone-deaf to the current horrifying malaise.

• With massive cuts at newspapers over the last decade, museums are turning into media organizations, a topic I was invited to discuss -- along with Sree Sreenivasan, the Met's new chief digital officer -- in this month's Museopunks podcast.

• Imprisoned Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova began a hunger strike Monday, protesting inhumane conditions in the prison where she's held and claiming a senior jail official threatened her life. Sentenced to two years for her role in the August 2012 protest "punk prayer" in a Moscow cathedral, she says she'll contintue the strike "until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle."

8.28.2013

• After police seized paintings that, among other topics, depicted Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in women's underwear, artist Konstantin Altunin has fled Russia and is reportedly seeking asylum in France. Also removed from view, a painting of lawmaker Vitaly Milonov titled Rainbow Milonov. It was Milonov who made the complaint that led to the confiscation of Altunin's art. His legislative claim to fame: he authored the bill, signed into law by Putin in June, that fines those who promote "sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors” in St. Petersburg up to 500,000 rubles ($15,150). Russia, of course, will be spreading Olympic spirit in Sochi next winter by prohibiting “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”--i.e. any expressions of homosexuality or displays of solidarity with LGBT people.

• Minneapolis security expert Bruce Schneier on why the UK government did what it did to Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda: "They're lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they're not to be messed with -- that the normal rules of polite conduct don't apply to people who screw with them. That's probably the scariest explanation of all."

As you read this, there's a good chance that On Kawara is in the midst of painting today's date: Aug. 28, 2013. Just about every day since since January 4, 1966, he's done so -- painted the date, which usually takes all day, on a small canvas, rendering the month in the language of the country this frequent traveler happens to be in -- as a meditative act and an ongoing work of conceptual art. The rules: he must complete each "date painting" on the day he started it, and if he fails, he must destroy it. Fascinated by time, On Kawara also has been known to send telegraphs and postcards to friends with the reassuring words, "I am still alive."

"He is like one of those peculiar, driven characters in a Paul Auster story, except On Kawara deserves a better fate than to be memorialised in Auster's overrated fiction," wrote Adrian Searle in 2002. "On Kawara creates his own memorial every day, in the eloquent silences of his works. He exists, and his art is the proof of it."

Via @museumnerd, we learn that On Kawara has been using Twitter since January 2009 to reiterate his existence. Just about every day he tweets "I AM STILL ALIVE #art" (occasionally he breaks form, like he did on April 29, 2009, when he tweeted, "i might die soon ..."). It's a surprising medium, yet a perfect one for the artist. On one hand, the evidence of the artist's hand is missing, his painstaking day-long painting replaced by a few keystrokes on a computer (maybe even aided by cut-and-paste commands and Twitter's tweet-scheduling function). But on the other, it's an apt medium for those obsessed with time, as On Kawara is: beneath each tweet is its timestamp--both day and date--offering more evidence of a moment of living catalogued.

Update 8.28.13: After all that typing, turns out I've been had. Sort of. The On Kawara Twitter account is the work of Pall Thayer, who way back in 2009 revealed this, which is pretty awesome:

On Kawara on twitter is a Perl script that gets automatically run once a day on a server in a cabinet in my living room. I haven't done anything to publicize his activities on twitter. All he does is announce, "I AM STILL ALIVE" once a day. He doesn't follow anyone. Yet, somehow, it seeped out into the twitter community. The "Perl Net::Twitter" client name should be a dead give away.

The interesting thing about this (and my original reason for launching it) is that it blatantly negates the whole idea behind On Kawara's "I AM STILL ALIVE" messages. Whereas those did indeed confirm that he was still alive, this doesn't. It's an automated process that he doesn't even control. Were he to die, he would continue to announce "I AM STILL ALIVE", everday, on twitter. So it really does two things; by falsely confirming that he is alive, it casts doubt on the issue but it also keeps the notion of him actively announcing that he is alive, alive.

So what may sound like a simple prank is actually pretty complex and gets more complex the more you think about it.

8.16.2013

• Žižek: "Assange, Manning, Snowden… these are our new heroes, exemplary cases of the new ethics that befits our era of digitalized control. They are no longer just whistle-blowers who denounce illegal practices of private companies (banks, tobacco and oil firms) to the public authorities; they denounce these public authorities themselves when they engage in 'private use of reason.'"

It evokes the classic punk-rock satires we grew up loving, like the Dead Kennedys's "Holiday in Cambodia," or the Descendents' "Suburban Home." To have fun at the NSA's expense while simultaneously doing something active, raising money, to fight against it—in our minds, this is a combination that works. A lot of people are subconsciously deterred from involvement in these kinds of issues because the very thought of what is actually happening in this country makes them anxious, and they'd rather ignore it. We want to reframe that impulse, giving people an engaging, spontaneous, expressive context for protest. Poetic terrorism, if you will.

• Questlove from The Roots spoke about racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, and Trayvon Martin on Democracy Now this week. Must-watch. Earlier: Questlove's Facebook post that went viral. On the George Zimmerman ruling: "i dont know how to not internalize the overall message this whole trayvon case has taught me: you aint shit."

• Architecture Studio, a new set from Lego, "comes with 1,210 white and translucent bricks. More notable is what it lacks: namely, instructions for any single thing you’re supposed to build with it. Instead, the kit is accompanied by a thick, 277-page guidebook filled with architectural concepts and building techniques alongside real world insights from prominent architecture studios from around the globe."

8.14.2013

Those who view art in the Detroit Institute of Art's collection with dollar signs in their eyes -- and the city's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, who announced Monday he's hired Christie's to appraise some of DIA's art for potential sale, may be among them -- seem to miss a key point: that the arts can, and likely will, play a key role in the economic revival of post-bankruptcy Detroit. Selling off masterworks by Van Gogh, Rivera, and van Eyck would effectively scatter a collection built with intention, reducing access for Detroit residents.

8.13.2013

• Trickle-down theory--aka "Reaganomics," once derided as "voodoo economics" by George H.W. Bush--is what's behind the notion of selling off part of the Detroit Institute of Art's collection, writes Christopher Knight:

The claim of such a plan goes like this: Privatize a great art collection owned by the public, and the benefits will trickle down to the people... Will we fall for it again in Detroit? Supplying art masterpieces to a booming luxury-goods market will supposedly mean ponies and party hats for pensioners. Fat chance.

• For its inaugural exhibition, the Imperial War Museum's new IWM Contemporary program presents Omer Fast's 30-minute video 5,000 Feet is the Best. On view through Sept. 29, the piece draws its name from an interview the artist did with a Las Vegas-based Predator drone operator, who (under condition of anonymity) shared what he believes to be the optimal altitude for the unmanned aerial vehicles. "It is a lot like playing a video game," he told Fast. "But playing the same video game four years straight on the same level." GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham says the US has killed 4,700 people using these video-game-like weapons. Commonwealth Projects shares a 9-minute excerpt from the video, which blends interview footage with actor dramatizations, while The Guardian offers another.

• Your moment of private escape--a book read on your Kindle or Nook--isn't so private, writes James Bridle. According to EFF's most recent E-Reader Privacy Chart, "almost every service tracks searches for books, meaning not just what you read, but what you're interested in, is stored" for corporations to use and/or sell.

8.09.2013

• Miami Beach police tasered to death 18-year-old artist and graffiti writer Israel Hernández-Llach early Tuesday morning. His crime: writing an R -- that's as far as he got in writing his tag, "Reefa" -- on the side of a shuttered McDonalds. “The officers were forced to use the Taser to avoid a physical incident," said the chief of police.

• Werner Herzog takes the dreaded driver-safety PSA into new territory with From One Minute to the Next, a new 35-minute documentary, which offers an unflinching and distinctly Herzogian cautionary tale about texting while driving. He forgoes the genre's usual scare tactics, instead opting for humane portraiture of both victims and perpetrators. It's every bit as engrossing as Grizzly Man or Into the Abyss, making the haunting case that any one of us could find ourselves an unintended killer for checking the iPhone one more time.

• Edward Winkelman posted this remarkable story on Facebook: a Russian man, displeased by the terms of an unsolicited credit card offer he received in the mail, scanned and modified the agreement -- to include terms like a 0% APR and no fees -- and mailed a signed copy back. The back approved a card, apparently without reading the fine print. Long story short, it's now two years later and he's suing the back for $727,000 for breach of contract.

• PJ Harvey's new single "Shaker Aemer" -- available as a free download -- draws attention to the plight of the last British resident in Guantánamo: Held without charge or trial and cleared of any wrongdoing in 2007, Aamer has been locked up for 11 years. The song recounts the 46-year-old's four-month hunger strike and forced feedings.

• Of its Jay Z/Taylor Swift "Picasso Baby" mashup, Pop Culture Piratewrites, "I love that both artists use their status as outsiders to connect with audiences despite being very much ‘insiders.' I think that dichotomy resonates with the art world attendees as well."

• Painter Rich Barlow tells MN Daily about his "Daily Bromides," a series of watercolor postcards he sends out anonymously -- one a day for a month to a random recipient -- depicting William Henry Fox Talbot's Reflected Trees, one of the first photographs ever made.